'Bit Of A Shock': NBC's Found Star Opens Up About Early Season 2 Renewal And Character's Deep Trauma
The fall of the 2023 TV schedule was a lot lighter on new series than usual due to the WGA writers strike and SAG-AFTRA actors strike, but NBC delivered a new drama that puts a twist on a weekly procedural. Found features a team working to find missing persons who nobody else is looking for, with the complication that Gabi Mosely (Shanola Hampton) is keeping her former captor (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) captive in her basement. The drama received an early renewal for Season 2, and actress Kelli Williams spoke with CinemaBlend about the good news... and the trauma that her character, Margaret Reed, is still processing.
Found was renewed for Season 2 in late November, along with fellow NBC series The Irrational. After Brett Dalton, who plays Mark Trent, addressed the show's "fantastic numbers" during an interview with CinemaBlend, I spoke with Kelli Williams. When I asked how it felt for her to get that Season 2 renewal before Season 1 even finished airing, she shared:
It felt amazing. I mean, it's a little bit of a shock. When you're thinking in nowadays terms, typically shows go ten to thirteen episodes. That's kind of why I was like, 'Ooh, I hope!' and it's in my head that that's what it might be. So it was a big surprise. Happy surprise, but a surprise nonetheless, because it [has] all of us up and moving again, because we're all based near or in Los Angeles. We all collectively have to go to Atlanta, which is so nuts. [laughs] It's like such a circus. We're just like, 'Here we go!' Pretty great.
Unfortunately, television is now in an era of viewers not being able to count on their favorite shows having long runs or even returning after a season finale. Even hits like Law & Order: Organized Crime can have their episode totals cut down from the typical total of 20+, raising some major questions. For as much as Found has been one of the most compelling options on TV this fall, there was just no guarantee of a Season 2... until NBC delivered the early news.
Of course, it was even harder than usual to gauge how a show was performing this fall due to the strikes, which meant that the usual kinds of promotion just couldn't happen until the WGA writers and SAG-AFTRA actors received fair deals to resume work. I asked Kelli Williams about what it's like for her to finally be able to talk about Found after the 2023 actors strike finally ended, and she explained:
It feels good... It's great that we get to actually say things. Before we were like, 'We can't say what we can't say!' It'd be like 'Hi! Over here!' but of course in solidarity with striking. It's nice that one, that we got a good deal, but then two, to be able to [talk]. It was just so exciting to do it and then share it and then the fact that we couldn't be super vocal or vocal at all. It was hard, but it was for good reason.
It's easy to understand why Found was an exciting project to work on during the first season, as Kelli Williams plays a character unlike any other than can be found in primetime. After a tragedy in her past that brought her to Gabi Mosely to join her mission, Margaret works to apply her trauma in a positive way.
While the trauma has affected her personal life insofar as she still sleeps at the bus station where her son disappeared years earlier, it enabled her to spot details and make connections that nobody else can in her professional life. Williams opened up about how she approaches Margaret's personal/profession balance in Found:
I think that they go hand in hand. I think that the fact that she has had such a deep, deep trauma in losing her son, in a moment of just the most horrible sort of mistake. Like, something so simple and have something that's so fleeting and so quickly can be taken away from you. The amount of guilt and shame that she feels around that, I think that she identifies with the families of all of these people that they then bring home where she so immediately has compassion and empathy for what they're going through.
The sudden and inexplicable loss of her son took a very great toll on her personal life, cutting Margaret off from the rest of her family and estranging her from her other children. She does seem to be making some progress in recent episodes, after encountering her daughter again, but it remains to be seen if that progress can continue. Williams went on:
So I think that she speaks a different language, in a sense, and the fact that she also has this ability to really zero in on the details of things with her 'Margaret Vision,' if you will. I think that she's so accustomed to hypersensitivity to detail that it is fueled by her pain, but I think that it also somehow is a comfort zone, because then she's using it for some good, or it keeps her together. I mean, honestly, it probably gives her purpose in a way.
It should be interesting if Gabi ever drops enough clues about her big Sir secret that Kelli Williams' character applies her 'Margaret Vision' to her friend and boss. Lacey has already become suspicious about what Gabi is hiding, and Brett Dalton shared that he thinks Trent is simply blinded to any signs that Gabi may be showing.
See what's ahead for Margaret in the rest of Found Season 1 now that you can count on a Season 2, with new episodes airing on Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET on NBC after The Voice. If you've missed any episodes or have just been waiting on news of a renewal vs. cancellation before watching, you can find the full first season so far streaming with a Peacock Premium subscription ahead of the 2024 TV schedule.
